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The Idea of Progress, An inguiry into its origin and growth
THE IDEA OF PROGRESS AN INQUIRY INTO ITS ORIGIN AND GROWTH
BY
J. B. BURY REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY, AND FELLOW OF KING'S
COLLEGE, IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
Dedicated to the memories of Charles Francois Castel de Saint- Pierre,
Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat de Condorcet, Auguste Comte,
Herbert Spencer, and other optimists mentioned in this volume.
Tantane uos generis tenuit fiducia uestri?
PREFACE
We may believe in the doctrine of Progress or we may not, but in
either case it is a matter of interest to examine the origins and
trace the history of what is now, even should it ultimately prove to
be no more than an idolum saeculi, the animating and controlling idea
of western civilisation. For the earthly Progress of humanity is the
general test to which social aims and theories are submitted as a
matter of course. The phrase CIVILISATION AND PROGRESS has become
stereotyped, and illustrates how we have come to judge a civilisation
good or bad according as it is or is not progressive. The ideals of
liberty and democracy, which have their own ancient and independent
justifications, have sought a new strength by attaching themselves to
Progress. The conjunctions of "liberty and progress," "democracy and
progress," meet us at every turn. Socialism, at an early stage of its
modern development, sought the same aid. The friends of Mars, who
cannot bear the prospect of perpetual peace, maintain that war is an
indispensable instrument of Progress. It is in the name of Progress
that the doctrinaires who established the present reign of terror in
Russia profess to act. All this shows the prevalent feeling that a
social or political theory or programme is hardly tenable if it cannot
claim that it harmonises with this controlling idea.
In the Middle Ages Europeans followed a different guiding star. The
idea of a life beyond the grave was in control, and the great things
of this life were conducted with reference to the next. When men's
deepest feelings reacted more steadily and powerfully to the idea of
saving their souls than to any other, harmony with this idea was the
test by which the opportuneness of social theories and institutions
was judged. Monasticism, for instance, throve under its aegis, while
liberty of conscience had no chance. With a new idea in control, this
has been reversed. Religious freedom has thriven under the aegis of
Progress; monasticism can make no appeal to it.
For the hope of an ultimate happy state on this planet to be enjoyed
by future generations--or of some state, at least, that may relatively
be considered happy--has replaced, as a social power, the hope of
felicity in another world. Belief in personal immortality is still
very widely entertained, but may we not fairly say that it has ceased
to be a central and guiding idea of collective life, a criterion by
which social values are measured? Many people do not believe in it;
many more regard it as so uncertain that they could not reasonably
permit it to affect their lives or opinions. Those who believe in it
are doubtless the majority, but belief has many degrees; and one can
hardly be wrong in saying that, as a general rule, this belief does
not possess the imaginations of those who hold it, that their emotions
react to it feebly, that it is felt to be remote and unreal, and has
comparatively seldom a more direct influence on conduct than the
abstract arguments to be found in treatises on morals.
Under the control of the idea of Progress the ethical code recognised
in the Western world has been reformed in modern times by a new
principle of far-reaching importance which has emanated from that
idea. When Isocrates formulated the rule of life, "Do unto others," he
probably did not mean to include among "others" slaves or savages. The
Stoics and the Christians extended its application to the whole of
living humanity. But in late years the rule has received a vastly
greater extension by the inclusion of the unborn generations of the
future. This principle of duty to posterity is a direct corollary of
the idea of Progress. In the recent war that idea, involving the moral
obligation of making sacrifices for the sake of future ages, was
constantly appealed to; just as in the Crusades, the most
characteristic wars of our medieval ancestors, the idea of human
destinies then in the ascendant lured thousands to hardship and death.
The present attempt to trace the genesis and growth of the idea in
broad outline is a purely historical inquiry, and any discussion of
the great issue which is involved lies outside its modest scope.
Occasional criticisms on particular forms which the creed of Progress
assumed, or on arguments which were used to support it, are not
intended as a judgment on its general validity. I may, however, make
two observations here. The doubts which Mr. Balfour expressed nearly
thirty years ago, in an Address delivered at Glasgow, have not, so far
as I know, been answered. And it is probable that many people, to whom
six years ago the notion of a sudden decline or break-up of our
western civilisation, as a result not of cosmic forces but of its own
development, would have appeared almost fantastic, will feel much less
confident to-day, notwithstanding the fact that the leading nations of
the world have instituted a league of peoples for the prevention of
war, the measure to which so many high priests of Progress have looked
forward as meaning a long stride forward on the road to Utopia.
The preponderance of France's part in developing the idea is an
outstanding feature of its history. France, who, like ancient Greece,
has always been a nursing-mother of ideas, bears the principal
responsibility for its growth; and if it is French thought that will
persistently claim our attention, this is not due to an arbitrary
preference on my part or to neglect of speculation in other countries.
J. B. BURY. January, 1920.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I SOME INTERPRETATIONS OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY: BODIN AND LE ROY
CHAPTER II UTILITY THE END OF KNOWLEDGE: BACON
CHAPTER III CARTESIANISM
CHAPTER IV THE DOCTRINE OF DEGENERATION: THE ANCIENTS AND MODERNS
CHAPTER V THE PROGRESS OF KNOWLEDGE: FONTENELLE
CHAPTER VI THE GENERAL PROGRESS OF MAN: ABBE DE SAINT-PIERRE
CHAPTER VII NEW CONCEPTIONS OF HISTORY: MONTESQUIEU, VOLTAIRE, TURGOT
CHAPTER VIII THE ENCYCLOPAEDISTS AND ECONOMISTS
CHAPTER IX WAS CIVILISATION A MISTAKE? ROUSSEAU, CHASTELLUX
CHAPTER X THE YEAR 2440
CHAPTER XI THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: CONDORCET
CHAPTER XII THE THEORY OF PROGRESS IN ENGLAND
CHAPTER XIII GERMAN SPECULATIONS ON PROGRESS
CHAPTER XIV CURRENTS OF THOUGHT IN FRANCE AFTER THE REVOLUTION
CHAPTER XV THE SEARCH FOR A LAW OF PROGRESS: I. SAINT-SIMON
CHAPTER XVI SEARCH FOR A LAW OF PROGRESS: II. COMTE
CHAPTER XVII "PROGRESS" IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT
(1830-1851)
CHAPTER XVIII MATERIAL PROGRESS: THE EXHIBITION OF 1851
CHAPTER XIX PROGRESS IN THE LIGHT OF EVOLUTION
EPILOGUE
APPENDIX: NOTES TO THE TEXT [Proofreaders note: these notes have been
interspersed in the main text as Footnotes]
INTRODUCTION
When we say that ideas rule the world, or exercise a decisive power in
history, we are generally thinking of those ideas which express human
aims and depend for their realisation on the human will, such as
liberty, toleration, equality of opportunity, socialism. Some of these
have been partly realised, and there is no reason why any of them
should not be fully realised, in a society or in the world, if it were
the united purpose of a society or of the world to realise it. They
are approved or condemned because they are held to be good or bad, not
because they are true or false. But there is another order of ideas
that play a great part in determining and directing the course of
man's conduct but do not depend on his will--ideas which bear upon the
mystery of life, such as Fate, Providence, or personal immortality.
Such ideas may operate in important ways on the forms of social
action, but they involve a question of fact and they are accepted or
rejected not because they are believed to be useful or injurious, but
because they are believed to be true or false.
The idea of the progress of humanity is an idea of this kind, and it
is important to be quite clear on the point. We now take it so much
for granted, we are so conscious of constantly progressing in
knowledge, arts, organising capacity, utilities of all sorts, that it
is easy to look upon Progress as an aim, like liberty or a world-
federation, which it only depends on our own efforts and good-will to
achieve. But though all increases of power and knowledge depend on
human effort, the idea of the Progress of humanity, from which all
these particular progresses derive their value, raises a definite
question of fact, which man's wishes or labours cannot affect any more
than his wishes or labours can prolong life beyond the grave.
This idea means that civilisation has moved, is moving, and will move
in a desirable direction. But in order to judge that we are moving in
a desirable direction we should have to know precisely what the
destination is. To the minds of most people the desirable outcome of
human development would be a condition of society in which all the
inhabitants of the planet would enjoy a perfectly happy existence. But
it is impossible to be sure that civilisation is moving in the right
direction to realise this aim. Certain features of our "progress" may
be urged as presumptions in its favour, but there are always offsets,
and it has always been easy to make out a case that, from the point of
view of increasing happiness, the tendencies of our progressive
civilisation are far from desirable. In short, it cannot be proved
that the unknown destination towards which man is advancing is
desirable. The movement may be Progress, or it may be in an
undesirable direction and therefore not Progress. This is a question
of fact, and one which is at present as insoluble as the question of
personal immortality. It is a problem which bears on the mystery of
life.
Moreover, even if it is admitted to be probable that the course of
civilisation has so far been in a desirable direction, and such as
would lead to general felicity if the direction were followed far
enough, it cannot be proved that ultimate attainment depends entirely
on the human will. For the advance might at some point be arrested by
an insuperable wall. Take the particular case of knowledge, as to
which it is generally taken for granted that the continuity of
progress in the future depends altogether on the continuity of human
effort (assuming that human brains do not degenerate). This assumption
is based on a strictly limited experience. Science has been advancing
without interruption during the last three or four hundred years;
every new discovery has led to new problems and new methods of
solution, and opened up new fields for exploration. Hitherto men of
science have not been compelled to halt, they have always found means
to advance further. But what assurance have we that they will not one
day come up against impassable barriers? The experience of four
hundred years, in which the surface of nature has been successfully
tapped, can hardly be said to warrant conclusions as to the prospect
of operations extending over four hundred or four thousand centuries.
Take biology or astronomy. How can we be sure that some day progress
may not come to a dead pause, not because knowledge is exhausted, but
because our resources for investigation are exhausted--because, for
instance, scientific instruments have reached the limit of perfection
beyond which it is demonstrably impossible to improve them, or because
(in the case of astronomy) we come into the presence of forces of
which, unlike gravitation, we have no terrestrial experience? It is an
assumption, which cannot be verified, that we shall not soon reach a
point in our knowledge of nature beyond which the human intellect is
unqualified to pass.
But it is just this assumption which is the light and inspiration of
man's scientific research. For if the assumption is not true, it means
that he can never come within sight of the goal which is, in the case
of physical science, if not a complete knowledge of the cosmos and the
processes of nature, at least an immeasurably larger and deeper
knowledge than we at present possess.
Thus continuous progress in man's knowledge of his environment, which
is one of the chief conditions of general Progress, is a hypothesis
which may or may not be true. And if it is true, there remains the
further hypothesis of man's moral and social "perfectibility," which
rests on much less impressive evidence. There is nothing to show that
he may not reach, in his psychical and social development, a stage at
which the conditions of his life will be still far from satisfactory,
and beyond which he will find it impossible to progress. This is a
question of fact which no willing on man's part can alter. It is a
question bearing on the mystery of life.
Enough has been said to show that the Progress of humanity belongs to
the same order of ideas as Providence or personal immortality. It is
true or it is false, and like them it cannot be proved either true or
false. Belief in it is an act of faith.
The idea of human Progress then is a theory which involves a synthesis
of the past and a prophecy of the future. It is based on an
interpretation of history which regards men as slowly advancing--
pedetemtim progredientes--in a definite and desirable direction, and
infers that this progress will continue indefinitely. And it implies
that, as
The issue of the earth's great business,
a condition of general happiness will ultimately be enjoyed, which
will justify the whole process of civilisation; for otherwise the
direction would not be desirable. There is also a further implication.
The process must be the necessary outcome of the psychical and social
nature of man; it must not be at the mercy of any external will;
otherwise there would be no guarantee of its continuance and its
issue, and the idea of Progress would lapse into the idea of
Providence.
As time is the very condition of the possibility of Progress, it is
obvious that the idea would be valueless if there were any cogent
reasons for supposing that the time at the disposal of humanity is
likely to reach a limit in the near future. If there were good cause
for believing that the earth would be uninhabitable in A.D. 2000 or
2100 the doctrine of Progress would lose its meaning and would
automatically disappear. It would be a delicate question to decide
what is the minimum period of time which must be assured to man for
his future development, in order that Progress should possess value
and appeal to the emotions. The recorded history of civilisation
covers 6000 years or so, and if we take this as a measure of our
conceptions of time-distances, we might assume that if we were sure of
a period ten times as long ahead of us the idea of Progress would not
lose its power of appeal. Sixty thousand years of HISTORICAL time,
when we survey the changes which have come to pass in six thousand,
opens to the imagination a range vast enough to seem almost endless.
This psychological question, however, need not be decided. For science
assures us that the stability of the present conditions of the solar
system is certified for many myriads of years to come. Whatever
gradual modifications of climate there may be, the planet will not
cease to support life for a period which transcends and flouts all
efforts of imagination. In short, the POSSIBILITY of Progress is
guaranteed by the high probability, based on astro- physical science,
of an immense time to progress in.
It may surprise many to be told that the notion of Progress, which now
seems so easy to apprehend, is of comparatively recent origin. It has
indeed been claimed that various thinkers, both ancient (for instance,
Seneca) and medieval (for instance, Friar Bacon), had long ago
conceived it. But sporadic observations--such as man's gradual rise
from primitive and savage conditions to a certain level of
civilisation by a series of inventions, or the possibility of some
future additions to his knowledge of nature--which were inevitable at
a certain stage of human reflection, do not amount to an anticipation
of the idea. The value of such observations was determined, and must
be estimated, by the whole context of ideas in which they occurred. It
is from its bearings on the future that Progress derives its value,
its interest, and its power. You may conceive civilisation as having
gradually advanced in the past, but you have not got the idea of
Progress until you go on to conceive that it is destined to advance
indefinitely in the future. Ideas have their intellectual climates,
and I propose to show briefly in this Introduction that the
intellectual climates of classical antiquity and the ensuing ages were
not propitious to the birth of the doctrine of Progress. It is not
till the sixteenth century that the obstacles to its appearance
definitely begin to be transcended and a favourable atmosphere to be
gradually prepared.
[Footnote: The history of the idea of Progress has been treated
briefly and partially by various French writers; e.g. Comte, Cours de
philosophie positive, vi. 321 sqq.; Buchez, Introduction a la science
de l'histoire, i. 99 sqq. (ed. 2, 1842); Javary, De l'idee de progres
(1850); Rigault, Histoire de la querelle des Anciens et des Modernes
(1856); Bouillier, Histoire de la philosophie cartesienne (1854);
Caro, Problemes de la morale sociale (1876); Brunetiere, La Formation
de l'idee de progres, in Etudes critiques, 5e serie. More recently M.
Jules Delvaille has attempted to trace its history fully, down to the
end of the eighteenth century. His Histoire de l'idee de progres
(1910) is planned on a large scale; he is erudite and has read
extensively. But his treatment is lacking in the power of
discrimination. He strikes one as anxious to bring within his net, as
theoriciens du progres, as many distinguished thinkers as possible;
and so, along with a great deal that is useful and relevant, we also
find in his book much that is irrelevant. He has not clearly seen that
the distinctive idea of Progress was not conceived in antiquity or in
the Middle Ages, or even in the Renaissance period; and when he comes
to modern times he fails to bring out clearly the decisive steps of
its growth. And he does not seem to realise that a man might be
"progressive" without believing in, or even thinking about, the
doctrine of Progress. Leonardo da Vinci and Berkeley are examples. In
my Ancient Greek Historians (1909) I dwelt on the modern origin of the
idea (p. 253 sqq.). Recently Mr. R. H. Murray, in a learned appendix
to his Erasmus and Luther, has developed the thesis that Progress was
not grasped in antiquity (though he makes an exception of Seneca),--a
welcome confirmation.]
I
It may, in particular, seem surprising that the Greeks, who were so
fertile in their speculations on human life, did not hit upon an idea
which seems so simple and obvious to us as the idea of Progress. But
if we try to realise their experience and the general character of
their thought we shall cease to wonder. Their recorded history did not
go back far, and so far as it did go there had been no impressive
series of new discoveries suggesting either an indefinite increase of
knowledge or a growing mastery of the forces of nature. In the period
in which their most brilliant minds were busied with the problems of
the universe men might improve the building of ships, or invent new
geometrical demonstrations, but their science did little or nothing to
transform the conditions of life or to open any vista into the future.
They were in the presence of no facts strong enough to counteract that
profound veneration of antiquity which seems natural to mankind, and
the Athenians of the age of Pericles or of Plato, though they were
thoroughly, obviously "modern" compared with the Homeric Greeks, were
never self- consciously "modern" as we are.
1.
The indications that human civilisation was a gradual growth, and that
man had painfully worked his way forward from a low and savage state,
could not, indeed, escape the sharp vision of the Greeks. For
instance, Aeschylus represents men as originally living at hazard in
sunless caves, and raised from that condition by Prometheus, who
taught them the arts of life. In Euripides we find a similar
recognition of the ascent of mankind to a civilised state, from
primitive barbarism, some god or other playing the part of Prometheus.
In such passages as these we have, it may be said, the idea that man
has progressed; and it may fairly be suggested that belief in a
natural progress lay, for Aeschylus as well as for Euripides, behind
the poetical fiction of supernatural intervention. But these
recognitions of a progress were not incompatible with the
widely-spread belief in an initial degeneration of the human race; nor
did it usually appear as a rival doctrine. The old legend of a "golden
age" of simplicity, from which man had fallen away, was generally
accepted as truth; and leading thinkers combined it with the doctrine
of a gradual sequence of social and material improvements [Footnote:
In the masterly survey of early Greek history which Thucydides
prefixed to his work, he traces the social progress of the Greeks in
historical times, and finds the key to it in the increase of wealth.]
during the subsequent period of decline. We find the two views thus
combined, for instance, in Plato's Laws, and in the earliest reasoned
history of civilisation written by Dicaearchus, a pupil of Aristotle.
[Footnote: Aristotle's own view is not very clear. He thinks that all
arts, sciences, and institutions have been repeatedly, or rather an
infinite number of times (word in Greek) discovered in the past and
again lost. Metaphysics, xi. 8 ad fin.; Politics, iv. 10, cp. ii. 2.
An infinite number of times seems to imply the doctrine of cycles.]
But the simple life of the first age, in which men were not worn with
toil, and war and disease were unknown, was regarded as the ideal
State to which man would lie only too fortunate if he could return. He
had indeed at a remote time ill the past succeeded in ameliorating
some of the conditions of his lot, but such ancient discoveries as
fire or ploughing or navigation or law-giving did not suggest the
guess that new inventions might lead ultimately to conditions in which
life would be more complex but as happy as the simple life of the
primitive world.
But, if some relative progress might be admitted, the general view of
Greek philosophers was that they were living in a period of inevitable
degeneration and decay--inevitable because it was prescribed by the
nature of the universe. We have only an imperfect knowledge of the
influential speculations of Heraclitus, Pythagoras, and Empedocles,
but we may take Plato's tentative philosophy of history to illustrate
the trend and the prejudices of Greek thought on this subject. The
world was created and set going by the Deity, and, as his work, it was
perfect; but it was not immortal and had in it the seeds of decay. The
period of its duration is 72,000 solar years. During the first half of
this period the original uniformity and order, which were impressed
upon it by the Creator, are maintained under his guidance; but then it
reaches a point from which it begins, as it were, to roll back; the
Deity has loosened his grip of the machine, the order is disturbed,
and the second 36,000 years are a period of gradual decay and
degeneration. At the end of this time, the world left to itself would
dissolve into chaos, but the Deity again seizes the helm and restores
the original conditions, and the whole process begins anew. The first
half of such a world-cycle corresponds to the Golden Age of legend in
which men lived happily and simply; we have now unfortunately reached
some point in the period of decadence.
Plato applies the theory of degradation in his study of political
communities. [Footnote: Plato's philosophy of history. In the myth of
the Statesman and the last Books of the Republic. The best elucidation
of these difficult passages will be found in the notes and appendix to
Book viii. in J. Adam's edition of the Republic (1902).] He conceives
his own Utopian aristocracy as having existed somewhere towards the
beginning of the period of the world's relapse, when things were not
so bad, [Footnote: Similarly he places the ideal society which he
describes in the Critias 9000 years before Solon. The state which he
plans in the Laws is indeed imagined as a practicable project in his
own day, but then it is only a second-best. The ideal state of which
Aristotle sketched an outline (Politics, iv. v.) is not set either in
time or in place.] and exhibits its gradual deterioration, through the
successive stages of timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and despotism.
He explains this deterioration as primarily caused by a degeneration
of the race, due to laxity and errors in the State regulation of
marriages, and the consequent birth of biologically inferior
individuals.
The theories of Plato are only the most illustrious example of the
tendency characteristic of Greek philosophical thinkers to idealise
the immutable as possessing a higher value than that which varies.
This affected all their social speculations. They believed in the
ideal of an absolute order in society, from which, when it is once
established, any deviation must be for the worse. Aristotle,
considering the subject from a practical point of view, laid down that
changes in an established social order are undesirable, and should be
as few and slight as possible. [Footnote: Politics, ii. 5.] This
prejudice against change excluded the apprehension of civilisation as
a progressive movement. It did not occur to Plato or any one else that
a perfect order might be attainable by a long series of changes and
adaptations. Such an order, being an embodiment of reason, could be
created only by a deliberate and immediate act of a planning mind. It
might be devised by the wisdom of a philosopher or revealed by the
Deity. Hence the salvation of a community must lie in preserving
intact, so far as possible, the institutions imposed by the
enlightened lawgiver, since change meant corruption and disaster.
These a priori principles account for the admiration of the Spartan
state entertained by many Greek philosophers, because it was supposed
to have preserved unchanged for an unusually long period a system
established by an inspired legislator.
2.
Thus time was regarded as the enemy of humanity. Horace's verse,
Damnosa quid non imminuit dies?
"time depreciates the value of the world," expresses the pessimistic
axiom accepted in most systems of ancient thought.
The theory of world-cycles was so widely current that it may almost be
described as the orthodox theory of cosmic time among the Greeks, and
it passed from them to the Romans.
[Footnote: Plato's world-cycle. I have omitted details not essential;
e.g. that in the first period men were born from the earth and only in
the second propagated themselves. The period of 36,000 years, known as
the Great Platonic Year, was probably a Babylonian astronomical
period, and was in any case based on the Babylonian sexagesimal system
and connected with the solar year conceived as consisting of 360 days.
Heraclitus seems to have accepted it as the duration of the world
between his periodic universal conflagrations. Plato derived the
number from predecessors, but based it on operations with the numbers
3, 4, 5, the length of the sides of the Pythagorean right-angled
triangle. The Great Year of the Pythagorean Philolaus seems to have
been different, and that of the Stoics was much longer (6,570,000
years).
I may refer here to Tacitus, Dialogus c. 16, as an appreciation of
historical perspective unusual in ancient writers: "The four hundred
years which separate us from the ancients are almost a vanishing
quantity if you compare them with the duration of the ages." See the
whole passage, where the Magnus Annus of 12,954 years is referred to.]
According to some of the Pythagoreans [Footnote: See Simplicius, Phys.
732, 26.] each cycle repeated to the minutest particular the course
and events of the preceding. If the universe dissolves into the
original chaos, there appeared to them to be no reason why the second
chaos should produce a world differing in the least respect from its
predecessor. The nth cycle would be indeed numerically distinct from
the first, but otherwise would be identical with it, and no man could
possibly discover the number of the cycle in which he was living. As
no end seems to have been assigned to the whole process, the course of
the world's history would contain an endless number of Trojan Wars,
for instance; an endless number of Platos would write an endless
number of Republics. Virgil uses this idea in his Fourth Eclogue,
where he meditates a return of the Golden Age:
Alter erit tum Tiphys, et altera quae uehat Argo Delectos heroas;
erunt etiam altera bella, Atque iterum ad Troiam magnus mittetur
Achilles.
The periodic theory might be held in forms in which this uncanny
doctrine of absolute identity was avoided; but at the best it meant an
endless monotonous iteration, which was singularly unlikely to
stimulate speculative interest in the future. It must be remembered
that no thinker had any means of knowing how near to the end of his
cycle the present hour might be. The most influential school of the
later Greek age, the Stoics, adopted the theory of cycles, and the
natural psychological effect of the theory is vividly reflected in
Marcus Aurelius, who frequently dwells on it in his Meditations. "The
rational soul," he says, "wanders round the whole world and through
the encompassing void, and gazes into infinite time, and considers the
periodic destructions and rebirths of the universe, and reflects that
our posterity will see nothing new, and that our ancestors saw nothing
greater than we have seen. A man of forty years, possessing the most
moderate intelligence, may be said to have seen all that is past and
all that is to come; so uniform is the world." [Footnote: xi. I. The
cyclical theory was curiously revived in the nineteenth; century by
Nietzsche, and it is interesting to note his avowal that it took him a
long time to overcome the feeling of pessimism which the doctrine
inspired.]
3.
And yet one Stoic philosopher saw clearly, and declared emphatically,
that increases in knowledge must be expected in the future.
"There are many peoples to-day," Seneca wrote, "who are ignorant of
the cause of eclipses of the moon, and it has only recently been
demonstrated among ourselves. The day will come when time and human
diligence will clear up problems which are now obscure. We divide the
few years of our lives unequally between study and vice, and it will
therefore be the work of many generations to explain such phenomena as
comets. One day our posterity will marvel at our ignorance of causes
so clear to them.
"How many new animals have we first come to know in the present age?
In time to come men will know much that is unknown to us. Many
discoveries are reserved for future ages, when our memory will have
faded from men's minds. We imagine ourselves initiated in the secrets
of nature; we are standing on the threshold of her temple."
[Footnote: The quotations from Seneca will be found in Naturales
Quaestiones, vii. 25 and 31. See also Epist. 64. Seneca implies
continuity in scientific research. Aristotle had stated this
expressly, pointing out that we are indebted not only to the author of
the philosophical theory which we accept as true, but also to the
predecessors whose views it has superseded (Metaphysics, i. ii. chap.
1). But he seems to consider his own system as final.]
But these predictions are far from showing that Seneca had the least
inkling of a doctrine of the Progress of humanity. Such a doctrine is
sharply excluded by the principles of his philosophy and his
profoundly pessimistic view of human affairs. Immediately after the
passage which I have quoted he goes on to enlarge on the progress of
vice. "Are you surprised to be told that human knowledge has not yet
completed its whole task? Why, human wickedness has not yet fully
developed."
Yet, at least, it may be said, Seneca believed in a progress of
knowledge and recognised its value. Yes, but the value which he
attributed to it did not lie in any advantages which it would bring to
the general community of mankind. He did not expect from it any
improvement of the world. The value of natural science, from his point
of view, was this, that it opened to the philosopher a divine region,
in which, "wandering among the stars," he could laugh at the earth and
all its riches, and his mind "delivered as it were from prison could
return to its original home." In other words, its value lay not in its
results, but simply in the intellectual activity; and therefore it
concerned not mankind at large but a few chosen individuals who,
doomed to live in a miserable world, could thus deliver their souls
from slavery.
For Seneca's belief in the theory of degeneration and the hopeless
corruption of the race is uncompromising. Human life on the earth is
periodically destroyed, alternately by fire and flood; and each period
begins with a golden age in which men live in rude simplicity,
innocent because they are ignorant not because they are wise. When
they degenerate from this state, arts and inventions promote
deterioration by ministering to luxury and vice.
Interesting, then, as Seneca's observations on the prospect of some
future scientific discoveries are, and they are unique in ancient
literature, [Footnote: They are general and definite. This
distinguishes them, for instance, from Plato's incidental hint in the
Republic as to the prospect of the future development of solid
geometry.] they were far from adumbrating a doctrine of the Progress
of man. For him, as for Plato and the older philosophers, time is the
enemy of man. [Footnote: The quotations and the references here will
be found in Nat. Quaest. i. Praef.; Epist. 104, Sec. 16 (cp. 110, Sec.
8; 117, Sec. 20, and the fine passage in 65, Sec. 16-21); Nat. Quaest.
iii. 28-30; and finally Epist. 90, Sec. 45, cp. Sec. 17. This last
letter is a criticism on Posidonius, who asserted that the arts
invented in primitive times were due to philosophers. Seneca
repudiates this view: omnia enim ista sagacitas hominum, non sapientia
inuenit.
Seneca touches on the possibility of the discovery of new lands beyond
the ocean in a passage in his Medea (374 sqq.) which has been often
quoted:
uenient annis secula seris, quibus oceanus uincula rerum laxet et
ingens pateat tellus Tiphysque novos detegat orbes, ... nec sit
terris ultima Thule.]